SJE Tools was born back in around 2008 – out of an idea that was spit balled around on the Project Guitar forum – the said idea was a router bit that could be used to radius fretboards. At this point in time living in South East Asia (Laos) I knew a local tool shop that made router bits, so a few dedicated buyers placed a few orders and that was it, what eventually became SJE Tools had been created.
One of the original radius bits:

Living Laos and back in 2008 online shopping was pretty niche and essentially the only options were direct via forums or eBay. So the router bits were mothballed and shelved and then didn’t see the light again until 2011 when I arrived in Australia.
Being in Australia I suddenly had access to decent woodworking tools and space for a shed! I started tooling up and wanted to get back into guitar building one of the first purchases was a Hafco thicknesser. After that purchase I then recoiled in horror when I saw the prices to replace the inserts from the supplied tool steel to carbide!
Returning to my tools ideas I started to source a manufacturer who I could buy some replacement inserts from, the manufacturer I found is the same manufacturer I have use to this day. Some other manufacturers were tested along the way, but they just weren’t reliable enough.
So once I had the inserts being produced it start the whole SJE Tools journey for real. Somewhere along the line a Facebook poster discovered the old thread in the Project Guitar forum and reached out to me, so I update the designs and spoke with the manufacturer and they were back in stock!
After that the carbide inserts really took off because the cornered market in Australia was keep the pricing at nearly twice what you could buy them for from the US!
At this point expansion via Amazon took place which was going fine until CoVID – that really destroyed what market existed – not because of the customer but just at how absolutely god awfully Amazon were handling everything! I also realised the “race to the bottom” is real since once I launched the fretboard radius bits on Amazon within a month “other fretboard radius bits” appeared.
Instead of fretboard my interest was set toward the guitar neck as when I was building a guitar I decided I wanted to have the same neck as my Peavey EVH Wolfgang. So after much designing I came up with the first D profile router bit but also worked with the manufacturer on a C profile also. Great bits, but, I realised this was an untapped market that I could router bits which are based on specific profiles. This needed however need manufacturers since the cutting edges has a multitude of radius’ that were put together to achieve these profile and the cutting edge needed to be absolutely true given the size of the bits.
The insert manufacturer produced the first batches but since they weren’t specialised in router bits they couldn’t maintain the quality. So I started the hunt for a specialist router bit manufacturer to handle the production of these bits and instead of China these moved to Taiwan. There was a literal night and day comparison between the old and new bits and have not received a single rejected bit in the past 4 years.
So here we still are! Trying to provide the best carbide inserts at the best prices for Australia and products that can help the guitar builders of the world speed up the production of guitar necks!
Thanks to all for the ongoing support!
Steve
